Residential Water Use: Cost and Savings Calculator for WI

Did you know?

  • Installing a more efficient showerhead could save your family hundreds of dollars per year in water and energy costs!
  • The more people you have in your home, the quicker you will save and payback the investment in your water efficient fixture!
  • At current energy prices, electric hot water heaters cost more to heat water than do gas hot water heaters!
  • Those in older homes that have not been updated with new faucets and fixtures stand to gain the most from improving water efficiency! 


Overview

This calculator allows you to select from your individual water utility provider.  The tool then imports the volumetric water and sewer fees and calculates the money you could save by installing a more efficient showerhead or toilet.

Investigating Home Water Use - Short presentation covering water use and how to use the calculator to investigate water use efficiency.  



Open the Water/Energy Cost Savings Calculator, Version 1.0 

Please note that clicking the above link will take you to a online file sharing site that will require you to open the file to enable drop down menus required for the calculator to work  

 
 
 

 

How does this calculator work?

For every drop of water used in the home, there is a water and sewer fee associated with the water used. Those fees are highly variable from community to community. This calculator allows the user to select their water utility from over 400 water providers in Wisconsin to calculate cost of showering and toilet flushing. It also estimates energy associated with hot water for showering by using median gas/electric costs from providers throughout the state.  It simply determines the volume of water used by asking some simple questions (such as number of people in the household, flow rate, shower length, etc.). Once the volumetric water use is determined the water/sewer rates can be applied to determine actual costs for these activities. Here is some estimates of how much you could save:

 
 
 
 
This resource will be periodically updated to reflect current pricing.  Some of the calculations used to develop this calculator can be found in the educational activity below.
 

Water Efficiency Activity for Kids

The following activity is a unit conversion activity designed for MS/HS students to determine how much it costs for them to take a shower in the morning and how much they could save over the course of the year by installing a more efficient showerhead.  It uses the same calculations as are in the calculator above. 

A Drop in the Bucket? [Download 367KB pdf]

If you have questions regarding any of the information on this page, please contact Kevin Masarik.